Happy to Listen?

I need to add a postscript on the recent appearance of Attorney General Gonzales before the Senate Judiciary Committee. At several points in the hearing the AG said something I couldn’t believe I was hearing. In a truly condescending tone, with a subtle facial smirk to match, he told the Senate panel that if the Senate had legislation it wanted to “suggest” related to the subject at hand, the president would be “happy to listen to their ideas”. Oh, really. He repeated this phrase several times, so it appeared to be one of the fully vetted and duly blessed phrases that are all the rage in Washington, DC these days. It’s hard to imagine cramming more executive arrogance into a few words. Every sixth grader knows that Congress doesn’t suggest legislative ideas; Congress passes legislation that becomes the law of the land unless the president vetoes it or the Supreme Court finds it constitutionally deficient, neither of which happens all that often – per the checks-and-balances plan.

Congress doesn’t send the president a little handwritten note that says, “Your Highness (or ‘Your Holiness’ if the president’s party is in the majority in Congress), we’ve been sitting around in the Big Domed Building on The Hill just schmoozing and musing, as you know we love to do, and we think we have some pretty darn good ideas we’d like to bounce off you, if you don’t mind. If you have a little spare time after you’ve cleared the thorny brush in Crawford, we hope you’ll be willing to listen to our suggestions. Please let us know if our ideas are good enough for you to act on. Your pals, the Congressional Think Tank of America.” Nope – the Congress sends the president a rather formal document that begins with words like, “Be it enacted by the Congress of the United States of America….” The president, who is no less and certainly no more powerful than Congress can then exercise his constitutional prerogative, which, we can only hope, involves a hell of a lot more consideration than just “happy listening”.

And we thought that little skirmish with the British in 1776 took care of King George and his monarchial unwillingness to regard the representatives of the people as his equal. Maybe it’s about time to gather for teatime at the Old North Bridge in Concord, again.